Certain entities, including both businesses and consumers, sometimes have a need to send bulk email. Bulk email is email that is sent to a large number of recipients. The number of recipients can run into the hundreds, the thousands, or even more. For example, an organization may need to send email to its employees. Or, a company may need to send email containing information about new products or discounts to consumers who have indicated that they want to receive such information. Or, a university may need to send email to all or some of its students. These are just examples of scenarios in which bulk email might be desirable.
Sending bulk email can be a relatively simple undertaking. This is especially true when the same email content is to be sent to all recipients. The email protocol SMTP used for sending email over the Internet supports specifying multiple recipients for a single message.
However, sometimes it is desirable for email content to vary at least slightly from one recipient to the next. For example, when a company sends information about a discount to its customers who wish to be notified of such a discount, the company may want to include the name and address of each customer in the email content. Or, when an organization sends email to its employees, it may want to include, in the email content, a unique URL link for each employee such that each employee can, for example, click on the link and at least semi-automatically register for a training program.
Bulk email sending services have been created to support special needs such as, but certainly not limited to, the described need to send numerous email messages that each incorporate some element of recipient-specific content. Even when all recipients are to receive the same email content, a bulk email sending service can often provide certain specialized services. Such services might include informational services such as the ability to track responses to each email, to track when and/or if email has been opened, etc.
One problem faced by bulk email sending services is the exploitation of their services by customers to send unsolicited messages, sometimes referred to in the art as “spam email” or just “spam.” A bulk email sending service is lured into sending spam when it sends email, on behalf of its customer, to a recipient that did not choose to receive the message. Bulk email sending services typically provide terms of use that state that the service cannot be used for sending unsolicited messages. Unfortunately, however, these terms are sometimes abused and it is difficult (e.g., expensive) for a sending service to track such abuse and/or to legally pursue the perpetrators.
On the recipient side, email service providers often provide their customers with one or more tools to combat against the receipt of spam. These tools sometimes allow a user to block subsequent email from a sender of spam. In some cases, when an email recipient utilizes a spam tool to block a particular sender, the email service provider will automatically delete (or send to a special folder) all subsequent emails received from the mail servers that sent the email. In some cases, email service providers actively monitor spam emails and, if they find a large number originating from the mail servers of a bulk email sending service, they may choose to block all subsequent emails from those mail servers so as to reduce the load on their resources.
Bulk email sending services commonly will send the bulk email from their own servers. Thus, an over-inclusive response to spam by an Internet service provider can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the email sending service for all of its customers, including well-meaning customers that do not send spam. In other words, legitimate (non-spam) emails sent out using the bulk email sending service can get automatically deleted or mishandled because of prior spam emails sent out by other customers of the service. Even if a few customers of the bulk email sending service send out spam email to several recipients, this can affect the quality of service for all customers of the service.
In many cases, bulk email sending services include an unsubscribe link (e.g., a URL link) in the content of emails sent to recipients on behalf of the customer. Accordingly, if the recipient finds the email to be spam, the recipient can click on the link to inform the sender that the email is spam. In response, the bulk email sending service can take measures to subsequently ensure that emails from that sender will not get sent to the recipient.
Unfortunately, few recipients of spam actually do click on the unsubscribe link. This may be because some spam email senders abuse the unsubscribe link mechanism. For example, a spammer may send out hundreds of emails to recipient email addresses not knowing the identity of the recipient or whether the recipient email address is a valid address. If a recipient clicks on the unsubscribe link, the spammer then knows that the recipient email address is a valid recipient email address to which more spam emails can be sent successfully. To avoid falling prey to such abuse, many email recipients simply ignore the unsubscribe link. Some service providers even advise their customers not to click on such links.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended for use as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.